Vanity Publishers: Self Publishing Companies to Avoid

This post is for you to easily share with friends, family and colleagues who are considering publishing and have perhaps mentioned different companies they’re considering going with.

I’m here to help you, help those in your circle learn about these self publishing companies to avoid in today’s new age of publishing.

I’m talking about the vanity publishers. They are a plague in today’s new age of publishing.

There are pirates in our publishing seas, arhgg!

These vanity publishers are in the business of selling overpriced services and packages and preying on naive and unsuspecting writers and authors. They draw them in, rip them off, and then kick them out with an incredibly bad book product that is priced outside of the competitive market.

I’ve helped authors recover their losses and start from scratch, with one author having lost over $20,000 only to have a book that wasn’t yet ready for sale. Truly outrageous.

These companies offer ridiculous packages priced up to $15,000 for a fiction books, and up to $25,000 for a nonfiction book.

Then they take 50% of your royalties!

For that you’ll receive a mediocre-at-best cover design, no payment of royalties, over inflated markups of promotional services that don’t work, email and phone harassment at an attempt to part you of thousands more from your pocket.

Then they price your book so it’s outside the competitive market. That’s means you won’t make anything back. It doesn’t matter how much you request for a price change, it won’t happen.

You’ve probably seen their Google Ads in Gmail and in Google when searching for something related to publishing. That’s right; you’ll see all their names racked up on the right hand side, waiting for an unsuspecting writer or author to take the bait.

It’s the only way they can get people in the door, because they sure as hell don’t get word of mouth referrals, that’s for sure!

Watch out, the big guys want in

As if this wasn’t bad enough.

Some of these companies are the so-called self publishing divisions of bigger trade publishing companies you’ve heard about before.

I’m not going to even link to them, you can Google for them yourself if you feel the need.

Self-publish the smart way

We’re in the new age of publishing where you no longer need gate keepers. However, you do need to avoid the pirates in the publishing seas by simply doing some research.

You can self-publish the smart way yourself. Get a pack of ISBN’s and seek recommendations from other writers and authors for book production services. Ask those in your network for trustworthy professionals available for hire at less than a fraction of these prices I mentioned above.

You’ll get a quality product that’s leaps and bounds above anything these vanity publishers will produce, and work with professionals who actually care about you.

You’ll maintain control, profit and get your message out to a global audience. You don’t need these pirates to do exactly what they provide, without any of the pitfalls. You can publish e-books yourself, even get worldwide print distribution.

Heck, this is exactly why I started Book Cover Cafe in the first place. To be a trusted place for writers and authors to get the right advice and professional publishing assistance. Not only Book Cover Cafe, but we even have trusted partners that we recommend writers and authors to.

Stay away from Tate Publishing. They ran a scam on me saying that they would have my book in stores and have advertisements online, on tv, and on Facebook, but they took my money and did nothing with it. They only printed on demand and sent me emails every day telling me all the great deals I would get if I bought my own book and sold it myself.

Aren’t self-publishing companies more like “brokers”? I thought they were supposed to help the inexperienced author connect the dots (so to speak) ie. connect them to cover and interior designers, editors, marketers, etc. all the while taking just a small percentage of the fees involved for their time and expertise. This takes a lot of pressure off of an author so he can maintain control without having to do months of research thus taking the focus from writing his book. Are there no reliable self-publishers out there?

For the most part, no. They’re not brokers but have outsourced teams that don’t produce the results an author is expecting. That’s why I created the free guide you’ll find on the website that guides authors on the process of self-publishing the smart way.